Because of Einstein’s limits on time travel this is written before the results of the federal election are known. So it’s clearly a risk to draw conclusions about what exactly happened. But a consensus did seem to emerge in the past two weeks of the campaign that the Bloc Québécois and the NDP had done better than expected. If the vote hasn’t borne that out, please disregard the following. Or maybe put it in your processing mill with all the other grist that turned out to be unfounded as we all try to figure out what did happen.

The two parties did better than expected because their two leaders did better than expected. In the case of Yves-François Blanchet, most people had no expectations of him, no one who doesn’t follow Quebec politics having heard of him. As for Jagmeet Singh, expectations were low on the basis of observed behaviour: his not being very present, very briefed or, seemingly, very quick on his toes. But, in part because expectations were so low, both leaders were pleasant surprises. That’s according to many commentators but also according to the 12 per cent of Quebec voters and five per cent of Canada-wide voters who, the polls said, moved to the Bloc and NDP, respectively, during the campaign.

How did they surprise? Mainly in the debates and mainly by behaving more or less like normal people. They aren’t normal people, of course. They are politicians and party leaders, albeit of smaller parties, and are used to living their lives in public. But they came across as recognizable human beings, rather than the automatons Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer tried so hard to imitate at various stages during the campaign.

They were even mildly amusing at times. When Lisa Laflamme asked him how “as prime minister” he would do this or that, Blanchet said “prime minister is a bit unlikely but …” He joked about how many seconds it would be before Maxime Bernier interrupted him (it was 10) and when he himself was accused of interrupting he said “Please go ahead. We’re still nice people.” As for Singh, when Trudeau kept calling him “Mr. Scheer” he made a joke of it: “I don’t know how people are getting me mixed up.” The word “laughter” appears in the Maclean’s transcript of the English debate 19 times (believe it or not). Five times it’s associated with Blanchet and five times with Singh. The other four leaders got one association each with the moderators accounting for the rest. I don’t think it’s an accident the candidates most associated with “laughter” did best.

Granted, it’s a lot easier to be relaxed and natural when you have, as Blanchet conceded explicitly, no chance of becoming prime minister. It also makes it much easier to promise people whatever they ask for. But it shouldn’t be beyond the ability of leaders who do have a chance to win to behave a little less like zombies. In his roughly 20 minutes of debate time Trudeau mentioned no fewer than five times how his government had raised 900,000 Canadians up out of poverty. Outside the classroom — or the tavern — does anyone repeat the same fact five times in 20 minutes?

As for Scheer, to my mind he lost the election when early in the debate he turned to Trudeau and accused him of being a phoney and a fraud. Going in, Scheer’s best selling point was that he seems a decent, reasonable, unassuming guy — a very Canadian guy, in those respects — who could do a competent job governing the country, albeit without the pizzazz, preening and posturing of the past four years. (If in fact Scheer won the election, I’d argue it was in spite of that intervention, not because of it.) But his obviously rehearsed attack mainly reminded people of question period. If you want to turn Canadians off, behave as if you’re in question period.

“Phoney” and “fraud” are such Trump-like words. Did Scheer learn nothing about parliamentary language in four years as Speaker? Trudeau is a disappointment and in many ways hypocritical but it’s hard to believe he’s actually a misogynist just pretending to be a feminist. Sure, he doesn’t live up to the high standards he would impose on everyone else. In our species, that’s not a rare trait. In any case, substance aside, Scheer’s “phoney and fraud” denunciation seemed completely canned.

Mulroney cabinet minister John Crosbie used to say sincerity is the most important thing in politics and once you can fake that you’ve got it made. If the parties do learn from this campaign that what the people want is politicians who are more natural, you can bet politicians will start rehearsing their naturalness.

If we do want people rather than automatons running for office, we might start by reforming question period. No more notes or “QP cards” would be my rule. Either people speak without such aids or they don’t speak. Have a look at last Saturday’s Brexit debate at parliamentlive.tv/Commons. By the Speaker’s own count, Boris Johnson took no fewer than 55 questions from members. The overwhelming majority he actually answered — in the sense of addressing the question that was asked, if not always to the questioner’s satisfaction.

If Friday's gains are anything to go by, investors are champing at the bit

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